cane; cervo (opera pavimentale)

In the Domus III of the ex Vescovado, a house built in the Augustan age and substantially remodelled at the end of the first century AD, the triclinium was the focus of attention. What remains is a fragment of its floor, an elegant exercise in mixed technique. The design is laid out in a T+U pattern: the U-shape marks where the dining couches once stood, paved in a black-and-white tessellated mosaic of limestone tesserae about a centimetre square. The horizontal bar of the T formed the entrance zone, similarly tesselated. But the vertical bar, the central rectangle before the couches, was done in opus sectile, a geometric composition of cut, coloured marbles. This was a standard arrangement in Roman dining rooms: the durable, patterned sectile panel would have been the visual and tactile highlight, visible to guests as they reclined, a quiet statement of domestic refinement.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.